


I Exist.

by donutcats



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Gen, I'm sort of on a fnv kick, Panic Attacks, a morbid realization of how terrible things are
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-07
Updated: 2016-09-07
Packaged: 2018-08-13 07:27:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7967779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/donutcats/pseuds/donutcats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>she bites down on her knuckles to remind herself she can still feel pain, that she's breathing, that she's alive. She's alive. She's alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Exist.

**Author's Note:**

> as a player, forlorn hope kind of hit me hard, and I can't exactly explain why. it was just, a sort of wake up call that hey, shit is completely fucked. so, I had to write about that happening to my courier, which grew into oh yeah she also has panic attacks and ptsd.

Doc Mitchell let her sleep in his bed the first night after what he jokingly refers to as her resurrection, because she was crying so hard. Crying and having a hard time breathing. She curled into herself, not bothering to slip under the threadbare covers. It felt too restricting. Too much like a blanket of dirt. 

She learns how to tamp it down, the panic that threatens to claw it's way up her throat. She survives and doesn't flinch because that's what the Mojave requires from you. It requires a thick skin and a thin set of morals. 

Some nights, when she's still alone, heading to Primm on the scraps of information she managed to snatch from anyone willing to tell her, some nights she lays on mattresses in gas stations and shoved into the corner of rusted trailers, and she cries. It's nothing like the first night, when Doc sat in his chair and watched her with a sad expression.

But she still cries, bites down on her knuckles to remind herself she can still feel pain, that she's breathing, that she's alive. She's alive. She's alive.

Then she finds a robot, some giant floating eye sort of thing. Ed-e doesn't judge. Ed-e beeps reassuringly sometimes, when she's settling down on yet another molding mattress and her lungs are already starting to hitch. It calms her, in a weird way. She puts him into sleep mode, and she cries far less than she used to.

Boone is nice to talk to. Not conversate with, because he's sort of quiet. The type of guy to give one word replies, but he never turns his ear away. Lately, she even notices him smiling more. She likes to consider them friends. Ed-e beeps happily from beside Boone, and what an odd little party they make.

She hardly cries anymore. She had to teach herself not to, not when she has a sniper sleeping close, who's ears are perked for any noise. When the tension builds up too much in her chest, she'll make an excuse to wander off, within shouting distance, but far enough away where no one will hear the way she hyperventilates. She doesn't cry, not anymore. There's no tears left to spill, because the Mojave has a talent for molding you in it's image, for making you feel hollow and dry. The stars wink at her and the sand threatens to choke her and she bites down hard on her hand.

She's alive.

The first time in awhile that she breaks down, something that rivals her first night reborn, they're in Camp Forlorn Hope, huddled in a tent at the very edges of the camp. Boone isn't sure what to do. She isn't sure what she'd want him to do. So he sits next to her on the mattress, a large hand between her shoulder blades as she resists the urge to chew on her fingers. She's alive.

The medical tent they just left was so _bloody_ , the faces of the soldiers are so empty, so dead behind the eyes. The supply tent is nothing more than storage for containers with nothing in them. Drinking dirty water and rationing the little food they find to the extreme. There's an entire patch of land behind the camp that's filled with rows and rows of graves. _"I've seen people get assigned out there. You'd think they were issued a death sentence with the way they react. They may as well have, with how things are."_

She understands now why some morbid bastard named this place Forlorn Hope.

She's not in a gave. Not anymore. Not anymore. The sight of the grave markers, it made her stomach flip, it made a memory flash by, of dirt mixing with blood, her blood, of finding a pile of cigarette butts next to a hole in the ground that was meant to be her final stop.

_She's alive._


End file.
